


real life sucks losers dry

by QueenOfCarrotFlowers



Series: Carrot's Dark Stories [14]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, Dark, Dark Comedy, Dark Crack, Darkfic, Eldritch, Explosions, F/M, First Person Kylo Ren, Heathers AU, Horror, Kylo and Rey end up together, Kylo is Veronica, Lovecraftian, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Mutual Masturbation, Other, POV First Person, Poisoning, Rey is JD, Shooting, Tags may be added, The Boromirs are the Heathers, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Untagged Background Relationships, but it's also funny I promise, everyone you love is going to die, not an hea, there is a gun at school, this is a Heathers AU so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-10-10 01:57:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20520071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers
Summary: You know how sometimes you meet someone, and you think they're awesome, but then it turns out they're really something else entirely? It was like that with Rey. Man, I can't believe there was a time when I actually thought she was cool.





	1. The New Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly what it says on the package. Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a new girl at school, she seems okay. Maybe she'll talk to me.

_Dear Diary: Heather told me she teaches people "real life." She said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, you're beautiful. - Veronica Sawyer, Heathers_

* * *

My name is Kylo Ren, and I'm trying to remember how I got into this mess. I can't remember much - my brain doesn't seem to be working very well right now - but I'll do my best to explain it to you.

It all started with the radio. I tell myself that if I had just settled on some other station, or if I'd been watching YouTube or Netflix instead - who the heck even listens to the radio anymore? - or even if I'd been reading a damn book, everything would have turned out differently and I wouldn't be spending the last moments of my life going insane while staring into the maw of Yog-Sothoth.

Just kidding. Yog-Sothoth doesn't have a maw.

Anyway, the radio. It was last Tuesday, and I was in bed but I wasn't sleepy. I'd already jacked off twice, once while thinking about Rose Tico and once while thinking about Uncle Lando. (Okay so, he’s old, but he’s handsome, and we're not related, don't judge me.) I was considering doing it one more time while thinking about both of them, when the radio turned itself on.

The weirdest part is that I didn't even know I had a radio. It's ancient; my mom used to have it in her office on campus, and when she upgraded to Spotify she gave it to me. I think my original plan was to take it apart and see if I could put it back together, but I never got around to it. I stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it. That was, like, eight years ago or something. The batteries should have been dead, but no. Eleven-thirty pm on Tuesday and that old radio turned itself on.

At first I couldn’t even tell what it was, just a quiet hum coming from the direction of my desk, barely loud enough to register. But it didn’t stop, and it was annoying, so I crawled out of bed and dug around to find the source, and there it was. Just that little old am/fm radio.

The humming was a voice, but I couldn’t tell you what it was saying. I couldn't even tell you if it was speaking English. All I remember was the sound of it - smooth and low and unmistakably female, with a slight British accent. So instead of turning it off, which is what I should have done, I brought the radio back to bed with me and listened to it until I fell asleep. 

* * *

The next day was Wednesday - a school day. It was like most other days up until lunch time. I was sitting with my friends - they call us The Boromirs because when we were in the third grade we decided to dress up like Lord of the Rings characters for Halloween, but we all ended up dressing like Boromir because he was the most badass.

(That’s not true, although I don’t know if anyone still remembers but me. Hux, Finn, and Poe - my friends, the other Boromirs - they all dressed up like him. I dressed up like Frodo, because Frodo is the best. But I was taller than them, and skinny, and even though they were nice about it I know they laughed behind my back. Because that’s what they do, and everyone else too.)

Anyway, we were having lunch and the other guys were doing the thing they do where they’re being good for no reason. And I don’t mean good like _nice_ which is bullshit fake, I mean good like _honestly trying to make people’s lives better_. So there’s this guy Mitty - Dopheld Mitaka, but everyone calls him Mitty - he’s around and he’s in Finn’s geometry class this year. Anyway, Mitty’s been yearning after this girl Kay, who I dated a couple times a couple years ago until she broke it off so she could try dating Rose. (Rose, who is now Finn’s girlfriend. Incestuous, right? It’s a small school) Anyway, Kay and Mitty have been dancing around each other for months, he’s just shy and she’s not forward, so Finn got the bright idea to help them along.

He stole - sorry, “borrowed” - Mitty’s phone during class and then brought it to me. Why me? Because I have exactly one skill - the Gift of Imitation. I’m not great at imitating voices but I can do patterns of speech, and writing. It was the second one that I was tasked with on that Wednesday, because the other Boromirs decided that I was going to write a text from Mitty, to Kay, to ask her out. Which I was happy to do, because really if you want to do a thing you should just do it. 

I can’t remember what I wrote exactly, knowing Mitty it was probably something like “Uh hey uh I want to ask you out but I’m shy but anyway will you go out with me?”, but whatever it was it worked because not five minutes after I sent the thing (and Finn had covertly slipped Mitty’s phone back into his bookbag) Kay was sidling up to him and then they were kissing?? 

“Great job, man,” Finn said to me, patting me on the back. I probably nodded and smiled, said _sure thing _or whatever. Finn’s my oldest friend, since kindergarten, and I like getting attention from him, especially since his attention is usually split three ways, between me and Poe and Hux.

I guess before I go further I should tell you a bit more about them. We’re all seniors, and it’s May, heading towards graduation, and we’re all ready to get out of here. Finn’s the most popular of us, just friendly and good-looking and honestly kind and big-hearted. I can’t count the number of evenings he’s spent talking through my shit with me. He’s the only black kid in our class, and one of just a few in the school, and I know that bothers him even though he refuses to talk to me about it. I wish he would; it would make me feel less like our friendship was one-sided.

Poe moved here in second grade, and his mom is a professor in the department where my mom’s chair, so we’ve known each other for a long time too. He’s kind of loud and self-centered, always talking about flying lessons and kind of braggy about who he’s dating, but he’s also a lot of fun to hang out with, full of ideas for fun stuff to do. He’s also really handsome which doesn’t hurt. 

Finally there’s Hux, who moved here just a year after Poe. His dad is some kind of university administrator, and he and my mom don’t get along but we try not to pay attention to that stuff. He’s kind of prickly and not outgoing and stuff like Poe and Finn, but he’s not really like me either. I guess you could say I have an affinity for him.

So right, we were watching Mitty and Kay kissing across the cafeteria, when my eye wandered over to the corner and got stuck there. Because sitting at a table in the corner, all by herself, is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t even tell you what it was about her that I found so compelling; she had brown hair pulled back, and a face, and … eyes? See what I mean? She just looked like a girl. But she was gazing at _me_, and that was cool. And she was all by herself, and I’d never seen her before. As I looked at her, looking at me, it occurred to me that I _had_ seen her before. In my history class, that morning. She’d been in the back corner and had barely registered - the teacher hadn’t introduced her, even though she was clearly new. And now here she was, staring at me.

So I went over to say hi. It was only polite, right?

“Hey,” I said. “I’m Kylo. Are you new here?”

That’s me, very smooth, with the great opening lines. The girl smiled up at me, and I got a hard-on, just like that, which I ignored and which I hoped she didn’t notice. I sat down across from her, just to make sure.

“I’m Rey,” she replied. Her voice was lovely, low and smooth with just a hint of a British accent, and familiar in a way that made my heart clench. “Just moved here yesterday.” She tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. “You’re in my history class. I thought your name was Ben?”

My hard-on collapsed, which would have been a blessing except that all the blood rushed from my cock up to my face. I could feel the steam rising from the tips of my ears. Why do I have to be such a dumbass? And why did I recognize her voice?

“Uh, yeah, my name is Ben but my friends call me Kylo. It’s, uh, like a nickname.”

This is a fucking lie. Kylo Ren was the name of my D&D character when we were twelve and I’ve tried to get people to call me Kylo ever since then and nobody will, not even the other Boromirs, but I can’t stop trying. 

But this girl, bless her, she smiled wider and she had dimples in her cheeks and she said, “It’s lovely to meet you, Kylo.”

It was lovely to meet her, too, but unfortunately just then the bell rang and I had to go back to the other table and get my stuff to go to my next class.

“Hey man,” Poe said as I came back to get my stuff, “where’d you go? You missed the proposal.”

“Proposal?” 

The other guys laughed. “Just kidding,” he said, “but it might be coming, those two are perfect for each other.”

“I was just over there talking to the new girl,” I said, answering his question, and I pointed to the table in the corner, but she was already gone, and they weren’t paying attention to me anyway. Being ignored by them hurt, but I was kind of used to it so I didn’t bother complaining. I grabbed my stuff and ran off to my next class.

It was then - running up the stairs to the science wing - that I realized how I knew her voice. She was the voice from the radio, the night before. She must have some kind of setup that allowed her to plug into the FM frequency and have her own show. That was pretty cool; impressive, to have a hobby like that. I reminded myself to ask her about it the next time I saw her. I really, really wanted to see her again. I’d only talked to her for a minute, but she was pretty and she called me _Kylo_, and she seemed to like me, and that never happens.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, she was the girl for me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I commissioned [SithSpence](https://twitter.com/sithspence) to do a recording of the fic and it's so glorious, guys, Spence is so talented and his voice is _perfect_. I've put it up on SoundCloud. There will be individual recordings for each chapter and when it's complete I'll make it an album. [Go to the Playlist here](https://soundcloud.com/qocf-608657113/sets/real-life-sucks-losers-dry).
> 
> Thanks to [LostInQueue](https://twitter.com/LQffa) for the art in Chapter One!
> 
> I will be posting a chapter a day for six days, until the story is finished. Each chapter has an illustration, I hope you like them, and please go give some love to the artists and to Spence, too.


	2. Rey's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My friends are assholes but the new girl - Rey - was there for me when I needed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the endnotes. This chapter is pretty soft, but just in case, if you don't mind being a little bit spoiled.

So after school on Wednesday the Boromirs had planned to go to the college library to study, because we all have this big Spanish test on Friday and that’s my worst subject. Poe aces Spanish because his family speaks it at home. It’s really unfair that he’s allowed to take the class for credit - shouldn’t he be taking German or French instead? - but what can I do. He helps me study anyway, so that’s good. So we had this plan to go study together after school, but Mr. Canady, my trigonometry teacher, caught me in the hall on the way out and had some question that I can’t remember any more, and by the time I got out to the parking lot the other guys were gone.

I was really hurt. The three of them ignore me a lot and make me feel like a fourth wheel, but they’d never actually ditched me before. When I realized that both Poe’s and Hux’s cars were gone, first I felt like crying. But then I was just angry. I sent a text to our group chat and waited a few minutes but none of them even bothered answering. I’m not sure why I was surprised; I guessed that was a thing that had been coming for a while. They probably had Rose with them. And maybe Mitty and Kay, like a celebratory thing. Who the fuck knows. All I knew was that I wasn’t with them.

There’s fields and stuff next to the school building where the teams practice, and then on the other side of that there’s this patch of woods that separates the school grounds from the houses on the other side. That’s where I went, into the woods. I found a nice big stick - more like a branch, really - and worked out my aggression on some trees. They’re old and strong, I didn’t think they’d mind. So that’s where I was, whacking trees with this big branch and swearing and maybe crying, just a little bit, because how could I not? Then I realized that I wasn’t alone. 

I didn’t hear anything, it was more like a sudden awareness, and when I turned around, there she was.

Rey.

She looked like she had in the classroom that morning, and in the cafeteria, and when I’d passed her in the hallway between fifth and sixth periods (yes, I realized, I’d seen her then, too). She was staring at me, with her eyes (hazel, I guess - a combination of brown and green) that shone with curiosity, her head tilted just so. From the angle I could see that her hair was pulled back in three little buns, that formed a line down the back of her head. I wanted to bounce them in my palm, and the thought gave me another hard-on.

I'd turned 18 in February so I was legally an adult, but standing in that woods, holding that stick and looking at this pretty girl, I didn't feel like one. At the end of my birthday party, after everyone else had passed out or gone home, I remember sitting by myself outside under the stars, higher than the sky and cold as fuck, thinking that I felt exactly the way I did the day before. And the day before that and the day before that and on and on all the way back to the womb. And that's what I am: a toddler with a constant hard-on and anger management issues. Yeehaw.

“Hey,” I said, and tossed down the branch, because what else could I do?

“Hey,” she said, and took a step closer, drawing her eyebrows together. She looked concerned. “Are you okay? I saw you here from the school and wanted to check on you.”

She _wanted to check on me_. I shrugged. “My friends ditched me after school, we have a big Spanish test on Friday and they know I need help studying. So I’m just working out some aggression before I go home to study by myself.”

Rey stared at me for a long moment. “That’s not good, that they ditched you. Have you ever ditched them?”

I shook my head. “I never would.” The reason I never would is because I’m entirely dependent on them for my emotional well-being, but she obviously misunderstood what I meant because then she said,

“That’s the sign of a great friend, always being there for your friends even when they ditch you. You’re too good for them, you know?”

I _did_ know, but I hadn’t realized it until just then. “I guess I am,” I said. 

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “you could do something to get back to them. Just a little something, to give them a taste of how it feels to be left behind.”

I considered it, for a minute. It really sucked being ditched. “What could I do?” I asked. I didn’t have any ideas of my own, so typical.

She shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe we can think of some things. In the meantime, you have more immediate concerns, don’t you? I can help you work out some aggression, if you’d like.”

My hard-on got more uncomfortable, and she smiled. “I mean, I also know Spanish - I took the AP test last year, so I’m not bothering with it now - but I can help you study. Only if you want.”

I didn’t give a flying fuck about Spanish, because I was pretty sure that she was hard-core flirting with me and I wasn’t going to say no to that.

“Uh, sure,” I said, going back to the place where I left my bookbag and swinging it over my shoulder. “I’d love to, uh, study with you.”

“Great!” she said, in her adorable British accent, her smile lighting up her face. “I live not far from here, we can walk.”

I followed her through the woods and out the other side, onto the residential street that leads into the housing development there. It’s called Grove Avenue or something like that. Groove, Grave, Grove. She walked and I followed, watching her sneakers as they hit the pavement just a few steps in front of me. I’m not sure why I didn’t walk next to her, now that I’m thinking about it. She talked to me, though, asked me about the Boromirs, why we’re called that, asked me about Finn and Hux and Poe, and she asked why I hang out with them at all if they ditch me.

“They’re my friends,” I told her, “and they don’t always ditch me. Just today.”

She hummed. “Does that surprise you, that they don’t ditch you more often?”

“What do you mean?”

She stopped, and turned around, and I looked up from her sneakers for the first time in ages. I didn’t glance around but I could see the houses from the corners of my eyes, and I had no idea where we were. She’d led me into a completely unfamiliar neighborhood, which is tough since I’ve lived in this town my whole life and had been to every part of it; just driving around sometimes in the evening, in one of my dad’s cars, smoking weed and playing music and hanging out. Maybe there was a new addition to the development I wasn’t aware of. But honestly I didn’t think about it too much, my mind was fully engrossed by her eyes.

“I mean, you’re a loser, Kylo. I know what I said earlier, but really.”

I would have argued; maybe I should have. I’m not a complete loser. I don’t fuck up _all_ the time. I’m good at some stuff. My parents love me. But I didn’t say anything; I just looked at her, and she kept talking.

She told me that the reason the guys kept leaving me behind is because I'm a loser and I'm no fun to be around, and I always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I mean, she's right, but it still hurt to hear her say it. 

But--

But then she looked up at me, her beautiful eyes - green and brown, like moss on a tree or something poetic like that - and she said to me, "But I like you, Kylo. I like you a lot. I don't care what they think. I like you, very much, just the way you are."

And that was all I needed. I thanked her, for liking me even though I’m a loser, and I continued to follow her to her house.

* * *

I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about Rey’s street, or her house. We were on the street, and we were in the house, and then we were in her bedroom, and it just kind of happened like that. I think her parents were home but I don’t remember meeting them, or seeing them, although I know I heard them once or twice when we were in her room and the door was closed. 

It was a girl’s room, reminded me of Rose’s and Kay’s and Jessika’s rooms. They’re the only girls’ rooms I’ve been in. Rose’s parents were pretty strict so I had to sneak in through the window. She was my first time, you know, and I was hers. That was awkward. I never fucked Kay or Jess but they let me go down on them, and that was great. Some guys are shitty about oral, I know, I hear what they say in the locker room, but I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve had the chance. Knowing that you’re making a girl feel good, making her wiggle and yell, that’s just a good feeling, and pussy tastes good. It just does.

Not gonna lie I was hoping that Rey was going to let me eat her out, but no such luck today. I tried to kiss her, but she wouldn’t even let me close, wouldn’t even let me hold her hand when I tried.

“I’m sorry, Kylo,” she said, curling up in the corner of her bed closest to the window and shooing me onto the chair at her desk. “I don’t like to be touched. It’s like… a thing for me. You understand?”

I didn’t, not really, but I nodded anyway. If she didn’t want to be touched I wasn’t going to touch her.

“You can’t touch me, but,” she pulled her t-shirt off over her head, “you can watch me.”

“Uh,” I said, like the smooth lothario I am. “Sure. Okay.”

So I watched her. She took off her bra next, exposing a pair of perfect tits - small, but round, with pink nipples nested in darker areolas that pebbled in the cool air. And finally her jeans and panties, which she pulled down all at once and tossed onto the floor. 

She was brave and hesitant, a combination that’s kind of hard for me to explain or even understand. She pulled her clothes right off and then just sat there and looked at me, her legs folded demurely in front of her. 

Then she unfolded, and lay down on her back, opening her legs so I could get a good look. I’ve seen my share of porn, and some real pussy, but I gotta say hers was the best. It was perfect to me. She was hairy, like trimmed but not smooth skin, and I noticed that her legs were unshaven too, like my mom’s. Her fingers reached down there and tentatively nudged her outer lips, like opening a curtain so I could see the main stage. Pink, glistening, her inner lips looked so sweet and slick; her opening was a dark mystery, and I could even see her clit, poking up out of its hood. I could smell her, too, organic and earthy, and it made my mouth water. 

Rey took one finger and ran it from her opening to her clit, and back down again. Slowly, as though she was teasing herself, her eyes on me the whole time. I just sat there, watching her.

“Are you gonna do anything?” she finally asked, humor and a bit of concern in her voice. “I want to see you, too.”

“Uh,” I answered, hearing the sound of shuffling on the other side of the door again. “Are you sure your parents aren’t going to come in?”

“Nah.” She shook her head and ran her finger around her clit. “They don’t care what I do in here.”

That’s all the reassurance I needed. In ten seconds I was naked, too, back on the chair with my spit-moistened hand on my cock and that gorgeous pussy on my mind. What I wouldn’t have given to put my mouth on her, but voyeurism would have to do. Maybe I could convince her to let me touch her, eventually, if I could prove to her that I was worthy.

She worked herself slow, which was maybe a little frustrating but not terrible. She started tentative, like she had when she undressed, but after a few minutes she was into it. It’s gonna sound weird but it was almost like she was reading my mind, finding all my favorite ideas and then putting them into practice. It wasn’t even like I was thinking of them, it was more like… she lifted her leg up and pushed one of her fingers inside her, and moaned this strange, low moan, and I was like _yes_ that’s exactly what I wanted. I just didn’t even realize it until she did it. It sounds crazy, but that’s what it was like.

After a while I don’t recall. I mean, I remember watching Rey, her naked body, listening to her moan and cry. And I remember that she came, how her face looked and how her body contracted and then let go, how she cried out in pleasure. And I remember that I came too, and it felt really good, but it’s a bit blurry after that. 

I stayed for a while, I think. I might have eaten dinner but I’m not sure; I wasn’t hungry when I left, anyway. Her parents? I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is _her voice_. More of her voice, like it was from the radio, only different; better, because she was with me. I was there, listening. No idea what she said.

And then I was home. I was late, much later than usual, like after 10 pm late. My mom was worried.

“Sweetie,” she said as she hurried to meet me as I walked in the front door, “I’ve been worried sick about you, where have you been?”

“Studying Spanish with the new girl,” I told her as I threw down my bookbag and toed off my sneakers. “She took the AP test last year so she’s really helpful.”

She followed me into the kitchen, where I helped myself to a glass of milk. “New girl?” she asked. “Tell me about her.”

“Nothing much to tell. In my history class. Knows Spanish. Uh, name is Rey?”

“Well,” she said, patting my arm and heading back into the living room, “that sounds nice. Just next time, text me to let me know you’ll be so late, okay?”

I said _okay_ and headed to my room, so I could rub another one out while thinking about beautiful Rey and her perfect pussy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: The first instance of mutual masturbation is in this chapter. It will be ongoing from here to the end.
> 
> Thank you [LostInQueue](https://twitter.com/LQffa) for the art for chapter two!
> 
> I commissioned [SithSpence](https://twitter.com/sithspence) to do a recording of the fic and it's so glorious, guys, Spence is so talented and his voice is _perfect_. I've put it up on SoundCloud. There will be individual recordings for each chapter and when it's complete I'll make it an album. [Go to the Playlist here](https://soundcloud.com/qocf-608657113/sets/real-life-sucks-losers-dry).


	3. Treehouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey had an idea , but I ended up paying for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning in the endnotes.

The next day was pretty weird.

It started out normal enough. First was history, Mr. Statura. Rey was there and I didn’t have a chance to talk to her but I waved at her, back there in the corner. I didn’t see her after class but then she was there anyway - second period was band, with Ms. Holdo. Holdo’s a friend of my mom’s but I try not to think about that too much. Rey was sitting across the room with the flute players although she didn’t seem to be playing. I missed a few intros because I was looking at her instead of paying attention but I’m not sure anyone noticed. I’m not sure anyone noticed me at all; I sit next to Hux, he’s second trumpet and I’m third, and I said hi but he was busy talking to the girl behind him and I’m not sure he even registered that I was there. 

Eventually it was lunch time, and that’s when the shit really hit the fan. I got held back in third period - that’s AP English, with Ms. Mothma, she’s married to Ms. Holdo which means she’s also friends with my mom… have I mentioned how incestuous this town is? She just wanted to talk to me about the timing for the exam, which is everyone’s concern, I don’t know why she singled me out but anyway I was late getting down to the cafeteria and by the time I got there, there was no seat at our usual table. The Boromirs table, I mean. Rose was sitting where I usually sit. 

“Hey guys,” I said, kind of looming over her. 

Finn glanced up at me, said _hey_, and then turned back to Rose, whose waist he had his arm around and who was telling some story about something that had happened earlier in a class, I guess.

“So first they were texting back and forth, you know, but then Mr Akbar saw him on his phone under the desk, and he took it away and put it in his desk drawer, so then Kay ripped a page out of the back of her book and they started writing notes back and forth, but then Mitty wasn’t being careful enough and he dropped it, right between their desks when Akbar was looking right at them, and…”

And I didn’t give a fuck, and none of them were looking at me anyway, they were all completely drawn into whatever dumbshit story Rose was telling - who cares about Mitty and Kay anyway - so I looked around and lo and behold there was Rey, sitting back at the table where I’d first talked to her the day before.

Just the day before? Twenty-four hours? It’s amazing how much can happen in twenty-four hours.

So I left my so-called friends and went over to sit with Rey.

She looked amazing, even better than she had before. More… focused, somehow. Brighter. I think it was because she let me see her naked.

“Hey, Rey,” I said. She nodded and waved at the seat across from her, so I sat.

“Hey, Kylo. How was the rest of your evening?”

“Fine,” I answered, and pulled my packed lunch out of my bag. Nothing fancy: couple of sandwiches, granola bar, apple, fruit juice. The same lunch I’ve been eating for years, just more of it. 

“Did you get in trouble for staying out so late? I worried about that a little, after you’d left.”

I shook my head as I swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “Not really,” I said, finally, sucking peanut butter off the roof of my mouth. “My mom was worried at first but when I explained that I was studying with you she seemed better.”

Rey smiled, and it was like a blossom lighting up in my chest. “That’s so good, Kylo.”

I loved it when she said _good_, even though she wasn’t calling me _good_ it was almost like she was, and that felt good. 

We sat for a while, talking about this and that, and I’d almost forgotten about how my friends had treated me earlier when she asked me to move around the table and sit next to her. “But not too close,” she added, shifting over a bit to give me more room. “Remember that I don’t like to be touched.”

I would never forget that; I’d never touch her, no matter how much I longed to. I wondered if her dad touched her or something. I’d kill him, if he did. But anyway, I sat next to her and she pointed at the table, where the other Boromirs - along with Rose and Kay and Mitty and Jess and even Phasma? Phasma was an art kid, they never talked to Phasma? How did they know her? And yet, there she was.

“Look at them over there,” she whispered. “Look at them having fun without you.”

I was looking. They certainly appeared to be having fun, laughing and hugging and sharing lunches without me.

“You know,” she said slowly, “I was thinking, about what we were talking about yesterday.”

I nodded, and tried to look thoughtful, although I had no idea what she was talking about. I remembered her naked body, and her voice, and not much else. 

“I had an idea.” 

“Okay, that’s great.” I hoped her idea involved letting me touch her, but then she lifted up her bookbag and opened it up, and I saw that there was a gun inside. A handgun. Like, made of metal and shit. I’ve seen guns, my dad owns a couple, but he keeps them locked up and I am not allowed under any circumstances to touch them, and I’ve never been tempted. So let’s say that I was pretty shocked to see that in her bag, in school.

“We’re not allowed to have guns in school,” I whisper-yelled, even as she reached in and pulled it out. “You might hurt somebody.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “I’m not going to hurt anybody, I just want to scare them a little. Make them feel bad for cutting you out.”

And before I could say or do anything she was out of her seat and halfway across the room, heading right towards the rest of the Boromirs. There wasn’t much I could do except follow her, and do my best to stop her from hurting anyway.

I ran, and reached her just as she pointed the gun at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. 

Pandemonium. Absolute pandemonium. Everybody jumped up, and I tried to grab her but she threw the gun in the air and I decided to catch it rather than go for her. So I’m standing there, holding this gun, everybody freaking out around me, Rey nowhere to be seen, and that’s how it was when the security officer finally made it over, accompanied by Vice Principal Peavey.

It looked bad, I know. There I am, in the middle of the cafeteria where a gun had just been fired, holding a gun. I handed the gun to the officer without any trouble, and Peavey just started railing at me, while the other kids in the room watched even as the teachers were working to file them all out and get them back to class. 

Anyway, they pulled me to the main office and Peavey asked me why I’d want to hurt my friends, and I didn’t want to get Rey in trouble or anything so I said _yes_ it was me, but I just wanted to scare them, because they were ignoring me or whatever. He yelled at me some more and then he called my mom. She was upset - I could hear her yelling through the phone from across the room - and she came and picked me up and took me home. 

They didn’t call the cops, which seemed really weird. Right? I mean you read about school shootings every week in this country, and they always call the cops and somebody gets arrested and it’s big news, but for some reason it seemed like they wanted to keep this quiet. So they just called my mom and she brought me home and they told me there would be more news tomorrow. I thought maybe they’d call the cops in the meantime, but they never did.

I got home, and my parents were both there with the lecture. Even my dad, who’s away most of the time and doesn’t pay attention to me when he is around. They told me how irresponsible it was for me to take a gun to school in the first place, let alone firing the thing, and they wanted to know what made me so upset that I would do something like that but then when I tried to explain it, they wouldn’t even listen to me. Finally they sent me to my room with a sandwich and told me I could come out in the morning to find out my punishment.

So I went. I checked my phone and none of the guys had texted me, I texted all of them in our regular group text - which didn’t have any messages since two days before, which was weird - but they didn’t respond to that either. I figured they were pissed, heck I would be pissed if one of them threatened to shoot me. So I played Candy Crush and contemplated doing homework while I thought about Rey’s pussy, until the sun went down.

I wished I’d had her number, and wondered why I didn’t ask for it during all the hours I’d been with her the day before. Hadn’t even occurred to me. Wasn’t even sure if she had a phone. I was wondering how on earth I was going to get in touch with her when there she was, throwing gravel against my bedroom window.

“I’m so sorry, Kylo,” she called up. She was crying; I could see the tears on her face from the light shining out on her from the kitchen window. “I was so scared, I just ran all the way home and it didn’t even occur to me that you’d catch the gun and be blamed for the whole thing.”

I can’t lie, I was kind of annoyed with her for leaving me like that, but she really couldn’t have known that I’d catch the gun and it was a dumb thing for me to do, really. So I told her it was okay and she was forgiven, and she gave me the biggest, most relieved smile and asked me to come outside with her. So I climbed out the window and down the trellis - still amazed that it didn’t break - and we went back into the yard, where the light from the house wouldn’t find us. I tried to hug her but she was still all _please don’t touch me_, which is fine.

The yard was awesome when I was younger. The Boromirs used to come over all the time because I had the best yard and my dad was cool and my mom made cookies. The summer after third grade - the year Hux moved here, the year we became The Boromirs - Dad helped us build this treehouse in the big oak at the corner of the yard. He did most of the work but we helped, carrying wood from the garage and holding nails and stuff, and it’s still there. We spent so many afternoons and weekends in that house, for years and years. We played D&D there, talked about our hopes and dreams, about girls, and boys (Poe and Hux made their preferences known pretty early on; it was cool) and life and death and all that shit that we don’t talk about any more. 

Rey and I headed straight for the treehouse, made ourselves comfortable in opposite corners, and then she just took off her clothes. It was like she was apologizing again, in the best way, without saying a word. I watched her touch her pussy and pinch her nipples and smelled her and listened to the sounds she made, and then she came and I came and I cleaned up my cum with my t-shirt, and then we went outside and laid on the grass and looked up at the sky. It was warm outside, and the sky was so clear, I felt like I could see every star. And we talked -- for the first time we talked like people talking about important stuff, about ourselves. Rey talked about herself, and I felt like I was being allowed to see something that no one ever saw; she wanted to tell _me_. I felt like I was special.

Her eyes filled with tears as she stared up into the starry sky. "I've never really had a home," she sighed, "always moving from town to town, my parents barely even acknowledge me, let alone tell me they love me. But you," she turned her gaze to me. "You, Kylo. I feel at home with you. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have a place. Do you feel it too?"

And I nodded, because I did.

I wanted to kiss her, but the expression on her face warned me away, so I didn’t. Instead, after a while, I stood up and she followed me and we sneaked back into the house (my parents were long asleep and we don’t have a security system). She followed me right in, and when I asked her if she should go home she just shrugged and cupped her boob through her shirt. That was all the encouragement I needed. We got back up to my room and she sat on my bed and took off her clothes again. I locked the door, just in case, and watched her touch her pussy and listened to her talk, and the next thing I knew the morning sun was shining in my face through the open window, and Rey was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: a gun is fired in school. Nobody is hurt.
> 
> One million thank yous to [Lilander](https://twitter.com/LilanderSw) for the artwork featured in this chapter!
> 
> I commissioned [SithSpence](https://twitter.com/sithspence) to do a recording of the fic and it's so glorious, guys, Spence is so talented and his voice is _perfect_. I've put it up on SoundCloud. There will be individual recordings for each chapter and when it's complete I'll make it an album. [Go to the Playlist here](https://soundcloud.com/qocf-608657113/sets/real-life-sucks-losers-dry).


	4. Finn's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey is full of ideas and I have a hard time saying no to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance.
> 
> I'll apologize again at the end of the chapter, for good measure.
> 
> Warnings are in the endnotes.

They suspended me from school. That’s it - indefinite suspension. I should have been arrested.

I mean, I know now why they didn’t do it. Everything makes sense in hindsight, as I stand here staring my future in the face. At the time, I just felt really lucky. Privileged, they call it. White dude privilege, your mom is friends with everybody privilege, maybe-your-dad-paid-everybody-off privilege. It wasn’t privilege at all; it was a curse, but I didn’t know that then. 

Anyway I was suspended, the school wasn’t delivering work for me like I thought they would, and my friends were _still_ ignoring my texts, so I spent the next two days playing Candy Crush and moping around the house. I missed the big Spanish test, but that was really okay because I would have failed anyway. Rey’s pussy is great but it didn’t teach me Spanish. 

Finn hosted a big party on Friday night; he always did that after big tests, and I wanted to go but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. I’d spent Thursday night waiting for Rey, and then listening to her on the radio before I went to sleep, so on Friday I did the same: lay in bed, listened to Rey say who knows what over that radio that shouldn’t work, until I woke up on Saturday morning with the sun in my face.

Rey was in my face, too; she’d climbed up the trellis and was looming over me when I woke up. It was a welcome loom, though, not at all creepy, and I invited her into bed but she said no.

“We have more important things to do,” she insisted. “We need to find out once and for all why they are ignoring you. It’s been two days since the thing at school, and not one of your so-called friends has even texted you to see if you’re alright.”

Her logic was sound, and I was curious about why they had stopped paying attention to me. Maybe they were jealous of Rey! That would be amusing. So we walked out through the house - my parents had gone somewhere, or they had ceased caring. Anyway, we didn’t run into them and I didn’t even try to be quiet as we passed through the kitchen and I ate a bowl of cereal before we headed off. I offered some to Rey but she said she wasn’t hungry.

It was then that I realized I’d never seen her eat, not even in the cafeteria; did she even have a tray? Or a lunch bag? But then she said it was time to go so I put my bowl in the sink and didn’t think about it again, for a while.

Finn’s house is just a couple of streets over, so maybe ten minutes later we’re walking in the sliding glass doors that lead straight into the kitchen. It was then that Rey had her bright idea.

“Hey!” she said, stepping around the island, covered with red Solo cups and empty bottles, to where the sink and the fridge stood close together. “He’s going to be really hungover, right? What if we make him a little cure, something that we tell him will make him feel better, but it’ll really make him _more_ sick, barf all over the place. That would be a good way to get back at him for being a shitty friend, right?”

I mean, she had a point, and it wouldn’t be _too_ bad if it just made him throw up, so I went into the fridge and got out the milk and the orange juice - that’s a pretty gross combination - and poured them together in a glass. Then I smelled chemicals and looked over and she was there by the sink, pouring drain cleaner into a mug.

“What are you doing?”

“I mean,” she looked down into the mug, then up at me innocently, “wouldn’t this make him really sick?”

I grabbed the bottle and stuck it under her nose. “That would _kill him_, Rey. Look at this: 

POISON

HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED

CAUSES SEVERE BURNS

I’m not offering that to my friend, not even as a joke. My God." I tossed the bottle back under the sink and slammed the cabinet shut.

She shrugged, and handed me the mug, and we went upstairs to find Finn.

He was, as I expected, not in his bedroom, but camped out in the game room, sprawled out on the sectional sofa, Xbox controller still in his lap, surrounded by the detritus of the party. I was a bit surprised to find him alone; people often stayed over or just passed out after Finn's parties, but maybe there was something going on this morning I wasn't aware of. 

He woke up as we were standing over him and I was trying to decide what the heck I was going to say to him.

"Hey, man," he groaned, sitting up and rubbing his face. The game controller fell off his lap and onto a slice of pepperoni pizza that was just hanging out on the carpet. He groaned again.

I couldn’t bother figuring out a way to be subtle about it, so I just spat it out. "Why are you guys ignoring me?"

His face, slowed by the hangover, eventually got to the point where it looked surprised.

"Ignoring you? Since when are we ignoring you?” He stood up and got right in my face. “We’ve texted you a bunch of times since you tried to shoot us on Thursday and you haven't responded to a single one. Who's ignoring who?" 

"What are you talking about?" I was getting angry. What a liar. "Look at my phone, I don't have any texts from you." 

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and handed it to him. He unlocked it and scrolled to my messages.

"'Hey Ben,'" he said, as though reading from the phone, "'hope you can make it to the party tonight.'"

"'Hey we need to talk about what happened Thursday, get in touch?'"

His expression was smug and I wanted to smack him.

"Here's one from Poe. 'Dude where are you we need to _estudiar español_, suspension is no excuse.'"

I grabbed the phone out of his hand and looked at the screen, which was full of unread and unanswered texts from Poe. I used my thumb to scroll back and found the same for Hux and Finn. I even had texts from Mitty and one from Phasma.

"What the fuck?"

"What the fuck indeed," Finn replied. “You've been acting really weird for a while, is everything okay?" He actually sounded concerned, and I softened a little, but then Rey nudged me and pointed at the mug.

Oh right. The lesson.

"Hey, before we talk, why don't you drink this? It's a special hangover cure my dad told me about."

This made him smile. "Yeah, your dad would know, wouldn't he." He took the mug.

"It only works if you drink it all at once," Rey whispered to me.

"Hey, it only works if you drink it all at once," I repeated more loudly, and Finn shrugged and downed the whole thing in three swallows.

He dropped the mug, which hit the carpet with a dull thud.

He clutched his throat and tried to say something, but all he could do was hack and groan.

He bent over and clutched his stomach, and, after a long, agonizing moment, let loose a whine so deep and loud that I will never forget it. it sounded as though it came from the very depths of his soul.

Finally he pitched forward, directly into the glass coffee table. Cups, pizza boxes, pizza, bottles, condoms, shards of glass - everything went flying with a mighty _crash_ as his body hit the table and then lay on the floor, motionless.

* * *

My brain shut down for a few seconds, but when it turned back on Finn was still there, lying on the floor, not moving, curled up amidst the trash and broken glass, and Rey was patting him down.

“What the _fuck!_” I yelled at her. I just stood there and yelled, I didn’t even move. “What the fuck was that! You gave him the drain cleaner! And he drank it! Oh shit, I need to call an ambulance, I need to call the police, oh, _shit_.”

It was only when I lifted my own phone that Rey jumped up and … well, she didn’t _grab_ me, because she doesn’t like being touched - I told you that, I’m pretty sure - but she put her hand out like she might and that was enough to get me to shut up and stop moving.

“Kylo,” she said, a warning in her voice, “you can’t call anybody. Nobody can know what’s happened here.”

“But but but but…” I said, “but Finn. Ambulance.”

She pushed his shoulder with the toe of her sneaker. “He’s dead, Kylo. You killed him.”

_I_ killed him. _I_ did that. Like hell I did.

“I didn’t kill him! _You_ did.” I stuck my finger in her face and yelled as loudly as I could. “You did it. You poured the mug. You killed my friend. I’m calling the police.”

“Kylo.” She looked so unimpressed, like I was stupid, or I was boring her, and that hurt. Then she sighed. “I poured the mug, yes, but you carried it upstairs, and you gave it to him.” She was right. That’s how it happened. I carried it, and then when we got upstairs I handed it to him, and then I told him to drink it, and he did.

I killed Finn. 

The world dropped from underneath me and for the first time in my life I understood what grief felt like. I’d known Finn since kindergarten, and loved him ever since. I’d spent more time with him than I had with anyone outside of my immediate family. He was my best friend. He was my Boromir. 

I stood in that game room and cried, and Rey let me, but only for a while. 

“Kylo.”

I kept crying, just wailing with tears and snot running down my face. I didn’t even bother wiping them off.

“Kylo! Ky-Lo,” she said more loudly, and I shook my head.

“KYLO! FOCUS! We can’t stay. We have to go.”

I finally wiped some of the wet from my face off on my arm. “Where are we going?”

She rolled her eyes, and I kind of hated her. “Anywhere. Not here. Anyway, I’m sorry I said you killed him, because of course you didn’t. You only gave it to him. Right? You didn’t force him to drink it.”

She was right, and I said it myself to see how it felt, coming out of my mouth. “He drank it himself.”

She grinned, and nodded, and held out his phone, which she’d plucked from some pocket or picked up from the sofa.

“He did, didn’t he. Life was just too much for him, and he couldn’t face it any longer. So he poured himself a nice mug of drain cleaner and decided to end it all. Poor, poor Finn.” 

I knew exactly what she wanted, and it made me sick but she was right. So I tucked my own phone back into my pocket, and I took Finn’s phone from Rey’s fingers, and I typed out a suicide note and directed it to Hux, Poe, and Finn’s dad.

“Hey guys, by the time you read this I will be dead. It was just too much pressure - being the smartest kid in class, and the most popular, and the best looking, it weighs on a guy. I just wanted to be myself but there was too much to live up to, and I can’t take it anymore. Give all my stuff to Goodwill; they’ll make sure it gets to people who need it most. I love you, Dad, and I’m sorry. And guys? I love you too. I would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king!”

I read the note over twice, with tears in my eyes, and right before I sent it I remembered to add myself as a recipient, too. I pressed the send button on Finn’s phone and my own phone dinged. I said one last goodbye to Finn, dead on the ground, and followed Rey downstairs and out of the house and then I don’t remember anything after that, for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: a character is tricked into drinking poison and dies.
> 
> I love Finn the best and I'm sorry for doing him dirty, but not so sorry I didn't do it.
> 
> Thanks again to [LostInQueue](https://twitter.com/LQffa) for the art for chapter four! In exchange for the three artworks she did for this, I wrote LostInQueue a little story. It's called [The Dynwar Wraith](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20564003) and it's a creepy little thing with an unhappy ending! Read it if you dare.
> 
> I commissioned [SithSpence](https://twitter.com/sithspence) to do a recording of the fic and it's so glorious, guys, Spence is so talented and his voice is _perfect_. I've put it up on SoundCloud. There will be individual recordings for each chapter and when it's complete I'll make it an album. [Go to the Playlist here](https://soundcloud.com/qocf-608657113/sets/real-life-sucks-losers-dry).


	5. The Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I'm in over my head but I don't know how to make it stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings are in the endnotes.

Finn was very popular, and well-loved by pretty much everyone, so the entire town was in mourning for days. There were stories in the paper and on the news; even though I wasn’t in school on Monday I was well aware of the excitement around his death. It was, frankly, disgusting.

Rey agreed with me.

“Everybody’s crying about it,” she said, lying across my bed on Monday afternoon, banishing me to the chair. She’d skipped school after lunch to hang out with me, which was pretty cool even though she had, so far, kept her clothes on. “But it’s so fucking performative. _Oh boo hoo, let me tell you about the time he_... whatever.” She flapped a hand in front of her face as though she was waving away a fly. “Everybody trying to prove that they were his best friend, when his real best friend is left out of the whole thing. His _real_ best friend, who he wasn’t even that great a friend to, at the end.” She rolled her eyes and turned onto her back, her belly button suddenly visible when her t-shirt hiked up and her jeans hiked down.

She was right and I was glad to hear her say it. At least someone was on my side.

My mom came in a little after that, she said that Finn’s funeral would be that evening, and I could go if I wanted to. If figured it would be more performative nonsense from people who didn’t really know him, but I also thought that given our history I should definitely go, do my own performance, so I did.

Poe and Hux and Mitty and Kay and Phasma were sitting in the front row when I got there, with Finn’s dad. Rose was next to him; she sobbed so loudly through the whole service the audio guy had to turn up the volume on the microphone so people could hear. Anyway, there wasn’t room for me, and the rest of the room was crowded, so I stood in the back corner with Rey at my elbow. I was glad she was there; we snarked through the entire thing, trading barbs as one-by-one everyone got up and told their favorite Finn stories and everyone else wept. We got some dirty looks but I didn’t really care.

After the service I tried to get a moment with Finn’s dad, but they were all going to the cemetery for the burial and somebody said that was for family only, so I just left with Rey. As we were leaving it did look like Hux and Poe drove towards the cemetery in Hux’s car, but they didn’t call over to me or anything even though I’m sure they saw me. Anyway, it’s fine. I went home, and Rey came with me, and we hung out until it got dark. I remember her voice, but I don’t remember what we talked about.

After the sun went down Rey suggested that we go to Poe’s house, to pay our respects or something. The intent of our visit, like so many other things I’ve done in the last week, is no longer clear in my mind. But what I remember is driving to Poe’s house in my dad’s car, with Rey in the passenger seat, and passing Poe and Hux as they were walking the other way on the sidewalk. I called out the window at them but they ignored me - typical, right? - so I parked the car and Rey and I got out and followed them.

Poe’s street ends at a T intersection, with a park across from the stop sign. That’s where the guys went, so that’s where we went, too. It was dark, but there are paths and lamp posts throughout the park, and even though the moon was new, for some reason I could see really well, so it wasn’t a problem for us to follow them. They wandered down the paths, not seeming to have any particular course in mind. In hindsight it seems creepy: them, walking together, hand-in-hand, heads close together, talking quietly about, I suppose, Finn and their shared mourning, and then me and Rey, not touching, following them pretty closely, but not drawing attention to ourselves. 

Eventually they went off the path, down a hill to a little copse of trees. We followed them there, too, and crouched to watch. It felt secretive, and a little perverse, and I was okay with that.

Poe backed Hux against one of the trees, and then he kissed him. I can’t say I was shocked, exactly; they’ve both been out for years, they’ve both dated guys, but I never saw them together, if you know what I mean. They were friends, in my mind - just two of the Boromirs - so that part of it was a bit surprising. But they were definitely kissing, and then Poe made a move, and then Hux made another move, and then I felt hurt. Just because… they’d done that before. It was pretty obvious, they’d touched each other like that before. Which means it was a secret, which means it was a secret that they’d kept from me.

I thought that, and then Rey said, “Looks like they’ve been keeping their relationship a secret from you. Why didn’t they tell you? Why didn’t they trust you?” 

And that made it real.

Rey was angry on my behalf, and I gotta say that it was pretty hot.

“They’ve been lying to you, probably for months,” she spat. “Look at them, tongues in each other’s mouths, pulling on each other's dicks, so comfortable. Don’t they look comfortable?”

They did, indeed, look very comfortable.

“Lying about their relationship. And now your friend is dead, and they’re turning to each other for support instead of turning to you. Doesn’t that make you angry?”

It did. It did make me angry. So when Rey reached into the waistband of her jeans and pulled out a gun, it made some amount of sense to me. And when she ran up to them and pressed the barrel against Hux’s temple and pulled the trigger, it made sense to me too. But then Poe started screaming and ran away. He ran up the hill, towards where I was still hiding, and Rey yelled at me and that’s when I realized that I was holding a gun, too. Don’t ask me how it got in my hand, but there it was. Rey was close behind him, and when he got up to the treeline I stood up.

“Ben!” he shouted. He saw me; he called my name.

The surprise of seeing me slowed him down just enough that Rey was able to catch up with him and knock him down onto his stomach. She had him by his legs and he rolled over, then he screamed louder. He was lying there on his back, and she crouched over him and he looked up at her as though she was the devil himself and he knew he was never getting redemption. He screamed and screamed for what felt like forever, although it was probably just a few seconds, and it was hard, it was _so hard_, but finally I got to them. I pressed that gun against his temple and pulled the trigger and there was silence again.

It was only after I pulled the trigger that I realized I’d pulled the trigger.

Poe was dead. He was lying on the ground, held down by my girlfriend - girlfriend? - and I had done it. Hux was dead too, across the copse, slumped over. I could see him through the trees, his jeans down around his hips. His cock was out. It was not anything I needed to see.

It was as though I’d been covered by a wet blanket, something that dulled everything and left me stupid, but it wasn’t until somebody pulled it off me that I knew it was there. Then I was feeling it again, the horror of having killed yet another friend, both my friends, who knew all my secrets and had only ever been supportive, up until the last week. 

I cried. I cried as hard as I did after I killed Finn, and Rey stood there for a couple of minutes, tolerating me, but then she started to get impatient. 

“Come on, Kylo,” she said, gesturing to Poe’s body. “We need to set this up so it looks like a suicide.”

I felt stupid again. “What?”

She gave me that look, the one that suggested she was getting tired of me, and I shut the hell up. 

“If we don’t make it look like a suicide, like we did with Finn,” she explained slowly, “people will know it was you. And then you’ll get arrested, and you’ll go to prison for a very long time. And you don’t want that, do you? Think about how ashamed of you your parents would be.”

She was right; my parents would be very ashamed. So I dragged Poe back down to Hux, and we laid them together and placed the guns in their hands, and then I sent texts from their phones to their parents, and to me. I don’t remember exactly what they said, some variation on how they loved each other so much, and how Finn’s death had devastated them but they didn’t want to live without him, or without each other. And both texts closed with those words: “I would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king!”

* * *

I suppose I made it home that night, although my memories of the next few days are patchy. I spent the days in my room, listening to the radio, reading, or playing games on my phone. In the afternoons Rey would skip class and come sit with me. That was nice.

In the evenings my parents would ignore me, and I would hang out in the treehouse with Rey. She would tell me about her loneliness, how badly she wanted to fit in, how her parents didn’t understand her. And she would look at me with her beautiful hazel eyes - sometimes she’d be naked while she did, and I’d be stroking my cock, watching her, too - and she’d say how happy she was to have met me, because she thought that I really understood her. And I’d come on my hand, and nod, and tell her yes - yes, I understand you. I understand you so well.

She said a lot of other things that I don’t remember, but I do remember that.

Poe and Hux had a joint funeral a few days later, and the entire town was there. They had to hold it outside, in the football stadium, and there were microphones and stuff so everyone could hear. 

Rey and I sat under the bleachers; my parents were out there somewhere, and Mitty and Kay, Phasma and Rose, but nobody cared about me, so it was fine for me to stay hidden. Apparently Poe hadn’t been out to his dad, so the high point of the funeral for us was when old Kes Dameron broke down over his son’s dead body, lying out there in the coffin for anyone to see, he wailed and cried about how much he loved his dead, gay son.

Rey scoffed at that. “Everyone knows Poe wasn’t gay,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. “He was _bi_, not gay. Oh my god.”

I couldn’t bring myself to laugh, but she was right. Rey was always right.

* * *

I went home after the funeral. Rey and I were hanging out in my room when mom came in and told me that the school had called and I was welcome to come back tomorrow, considering the circumstances. I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t have much going on at home so I said sure.

I went back to school the next day, but I’m not sure if I went to class. I went to lunch, and sat with Rey in the corner because nobody else would talk to me, because all my friends were dead, and I went to assembly. There were many assemblies, or maybe it was just one long one. We talked about mourning, and peer pressure, and stress, and bullying, which didn’t make sense because Finn, Poe, and Hux were neither bullies nor bullied, but oh well.

I was surprisingly upset about how everybody was ignoring me, and Rey was even more upset, which I appreciated.

“We should make them pay,” she said one evening in the treehouse, her legs still spread open, pussy pink and glistening in the light of the camping lantern, and my own cum very hot on my wrist. “They only ever liked you because of your friends, and that’s so unfair to you. We can do something big. _I _can.”

Then she looked at me, with those eyes again. “I _have_ made you do things you didn’t want to do,” she murmured, “and it’s time for me to make it up to you.”

I was shocked to hear her admit this. She seemed to like me, but she also seemed really cold, so I was happy to know that she knew I hadn’t wanted to kill my friends. That was good to hear. 

But I didn’t really want her to hurt anybody else.

“It’s okay, Rey,” I insisted, as I used my sock to wipe up the cum. “You don’t have to do that. Even with the time I’ve missed I’ll be graduating next month, and I’ve already been accepted to college out of state. Nobody there will know about this bullshit. I’ll be able to start over.”

“Are you sure, Kylo?” She asked, as she tugged up her jeans. “Really sure? Because I would do anything for you. _Anything_.”

“Would you fuck me?” Was the thing my dumb mouth said when it opened, and I knew it was dumb because she wouldn’t let me touch her at all, so why the hell would she let me fuck her? And yeah she gave me a look, and I shut the hell up. But then she took off her jeans again and I pulled mine down and we had another round, staring at each other across the treehouse, so I guess that was okay.

* * *

Right, so the next day is today, and this is the day when the shit pretty much hits the fan.

This morning there was another assembly scheduled at school, with some visiting counselor, and when I came into the gym everybody else was already there, including Rey. She looked really weird, all smiles, like she was really excited about something. She never looked like that, so it concerned me.

“What’s up, Rey,” I said, standing next to her at the bottom of the bleachers that lined the west wall of the gym. The morning sun was shining through the high windows, and it was so bright and hot it made my head hurt.

“Well,” she started, looking everywhere but at me, the excitement practically rolling off of her, “I know you said you didn’t want me to do anything for you, but I thought about it and I decided to anyway. Surprise!”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

That was strange; I was really sure that Rey didn’t have a cell phone. So I said, “Why do you have a cell phone?” 

And she said, “So I can set off the TNT that I spent all night rigging up under the bleachers.”

It was then that I realized that Rey was fucking insane. So I did what any decent person would do and I tackled her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: there are two funerals. Two characters are shot with handguns and die.
> 
> I commissioned this chapters art from [Tsukhood](https://twitter.com/tsukhood), who is an absolute pleasure to work with and interpreted my request perfectly! Poor baby Kylo and mean Rey 😭
> 
> I commissioned [SithSpence](https://twitter.com/sithspence) to do a recording of the fic and it's so glorious, guys, Spence is so talented and his voice is _perfect_. I've put it up on SoundCloud. There will be individual recordings for each chapter and when it's complete I'll make it an album. [Go to the Playlist here](https://soundcloud.com/qocf-608657113/sets/real-life-sucks-losers-dry).


	6. The Welcoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fuck it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings are in the endnotes

Have you ever seen a starfish walking across the sand? 

Or a cuttlefish, just doing its thing? 

I saw videos of both, last year, when we were studying ocean life in science class. Starfish have tube feet - not the arms, but these little projections that line the bottoms of the arms and enable the starfish to move. If they get out of water and onto hot sand they’ll die, a combination of burning to death and dehydration, but before they do they’ll try to walk back to the water, and it is a fucked up thing to see. The starfish will contort itself to keep as much of its body off the sand as it can, and it’ll unfurl some of these tube feet and send them to the ground, and it’ll undulate them to move itself one way or the other. It’s just a poor animal trying to take care of itself, but it looks monstrous. And cuttlefish - they’re fucked up too. They’re kind of like little squids, but cute, and they change colors suddenly, but they’ll also have like oscillating color change. Like if you’re in a dark elevator, and the light shines through every time to pass a floor? Dark - light - dark - light? Like that.

That’s what Rey looks like. I mean, what she _really_ looks like. 

I understand why she didn’t want me to touch her. As long as I didn’t touch her, I would see her however she wanted me to see her - hot, cute, pretty. But now that I’ve put my hands on her, I see her as she is.

“You shouldn’t have touched me,” she said, writhing beneath me, her voice similar to the human Rey’s but more distant, and strange, as though I was hearing it through water. She sounded disappointed.

“I’m glad I did,” I said. “What are you doing?”

She smiled, which was odd since she didn’t have a face. She said, “I’m serving my master. It desires to come over, but it has certain requirements, certain needs. I have fewer needs, so I came first, in order to make the path. Pave the way.”

“Who is your master?” I asked, because of course that was the most important thing for me to be thinking about at that moment.

She answered, her voice full of pride. “My master is Yog-Sothoth, the All-in-One and One-in-All of Limitless Being and Self. It is coterminous with all of time and space, yet is locked outside of your universe. I am here to do the unlocking.”

“How are you doing that?” 

“Why,” she answered, sounding surprised - as though I should have known the answer, “through you. Yog-Sothoth requires sacrifice - emotional, sexual, blood sacrifice - and who better to provide all three than a teenage boy?”

I mean, when she said it like that, I could understand where she was coming from. But.

“There are wars happening, all over the world,” I argued. “Why not go there? There’d be lots of sex and blood and high emotions in a war zone. Why not go there? Why come here?”

“Fuck me gently with the Silver Key, do you not know?” she said, her voice now highly amused; she would have laughed if she’d had the anatomy to do it. “I came to you because when I looked at your world, at everyone in it, everything that was happening, I knew that going through you would be the most fun. And it has been. This has been very fun. I hope you’ve had fun, too.”

Was she fucking kidding me?

“Fun? FUN? This hasn’t been fun! It’s been a fucking disaster!” I yelled at her, and tried to grasp her, but it was like she wasn’t quite there. I was able to grab the cell phone, so that was something. “You made me kill my friends! You made my parents ignore me, and made my friends desert me! I’m a pariah, and it’s all because of you!”

When I’d finished my diatribe there was silence, and she didn’t reply, but she unfurled a few of her limbs and gestured to the space around us. 

“Are you sure it was all me?” she whispered, directly into my brain. “Are you absolutely sure?”

I looked up, and saw that the entire student body of the school was staring down at us, lying together on the gym floor. And then I looked back down, and I realized that they weren't staring down at us. They were staring down at _me_. The thing that had been Rey was underneath me, but they couldn’t see her. Mitty and Kay, in the middle of the top row, and Rose and Phasma, sitting together near the floor, they were all gawking at me, shock and horror clear on their faces. As far as they were concerned, I was all by myself, lying on the gym floor and screaming at nothing, my own cell phone clasped in my hand.

Fuck it. Fuck it all. 

I stood up, took a step back from the undulating monstrosity, and dusted myself off. I shouted into the room, still silent with shock, “I would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king!” And then, as every other student in that school watched, I lifted up my phone and dialed the number I’d programmed into the detonator attached to the TNT that I’d spent most of the night rigging up underneath the bleachers.

The bleachers erupted, blowing students and parts of students up to the ceiling, and the collective material detritus rained down into the middle of the gym. There was some screaming, too, but I couldn’t hear it well because the blast had mostly deafened me. All I could hear was a ringing. I’d been knocked onto my back, but I was unhurt, although I was a huge mess. There was a lot of blood, and other stuff. The floor was slippery.

It didn’t matter, though. 

“So good, Ben,” Rey’s voice hissed in my head again, the breathless tone of post-orgasm, as the thing writhed in the hot gore that coated the floor. “Exactly what Yog-Sothoth required. The best thing that you ever could have done with your worthless, insignificant life.”

I gotta admit, even after everything else, that hurt.

There was a new sound then, another roar that cut through the ringing in my ears. Similar to the blast, but deeper and weirder; a backwards sort of noise. And then Yog-Sothoth was there, first one sphere, and then another, appearing in the hazy air in the middle of the gym. More and more of them, an amalgamation of bubbles of unusual colors, colors that haven’t ever existed and that hurt my eyes when I looked at them; so many spheres and so many colors. And as I stood there, next to this thing that had been Rey, I could feel the madness slipping into my mind and I knew it was my last chance to make a rational request. I couldn’t resist.

“Hey, since we’re here, and I know what you really are, and it’s looking like the world’s about to end… will you fuck me _now_?”

It turns out she _can_ laugh, even without the relevant anatomy, and she laughed really hard at that. But she’s also unfurling one of her limbs and is reaching out for my belt. Here we go. It might be the end of the world, but at least I’m finally gonna get laid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is an explosion that kills many people and the result is described in some detail. Rey turns into a monster. Another monster appears. Future insanity and sexual activity between a human and a monster is strongly implied.
> 
> Thank you so much to [youdidnotseeme](https://youdidnotseeme.tumblr.com) for this chapter's artwork! They gave me the best monster!Rey and confused!Kylo and Yog Sothoth that I could possibly ask for. I commissioned this and I would recommend them for any of your eldritch commission needs.
> 
> [Yog Sothoth](https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth) is my favorite Lovecraftian entity and I am always thrilled to have an excuse to write it into a story! If you're just, like, _itching_ for more feel free to check out [Unmarked](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315230) (an MCU Soulmates AU with Yog Sothoth in place of Thanos - very slow to update but not abandoned) or [Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn, or, How Rey and Kylo Ren Saved the Galaxy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16524014) (a canon-divergent fic in which the Old Ones cross into the Star Wars Universe).
> 
> I commissioned [SithSpence](https://twitter.com/sithspence) to do a recording of the fic and it's so glorious, guys, Spence is so talented and his voice is _perfect_. I've put it up on SoundCloud. There will be individual recordings for each chapter and when it's complete I'll make it an album. [Go to the Playlist here](https://soundcloud.com/qocf-608657113/sets/real-life-sucks-losers-dry).

**Author's Note:**

> One million thank yous to flypaper_brain, LoveThemFiercely, and HarpiaHarpyja, all of whom read this at various stages and reassured me that yes, although this is _fucking bonkers_ it's also worth writing. And, I hope, worth reading. Thanks also to the RFFA mods for their hard work organizing and editing the Anthology! They made this wonderful mystery moodboard for the fic, which I _adore_.
> 
>   

> 
> Let me know what you think, I'm honestly curious!
> 
> I'm leofgyth on Tumblr and leoba on Twitter and Pillowfort. Come yell at me!


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